Manchin gambled on Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and lost
Zachary Faria
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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has announced that he is not running for reelection in 2024. His decision is a direct result of both his failures and the failures of the Democratic Party.
Manchin was the biggest loser in politics in 2022, jumping on board with President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a climate bill that worsened inflation. He did that on the promise that his own permitting reform bill could move forward but gave his vote to Biden’s bill and gave up his leverage as his own bill was voted down.
WHAT THE GOP CAN LEARN FROM 2023
That climate bill caused Manchin’s approval numbers in West Virginia to crater. After narrowly surviving a tough reelection challenge in 2018, Manchin was likely going to lose next year. He had finally tanked his reputation among West Virginia voters, and the inevitable loss he was facing almost certainly played into his decision to forgo another reelection race.
That is how Manchin’s failures determined his fate, but the Democratic Party’s failures may determine what Manchin does next. He implied in his announcement video that he may, in fact, run for president as a third-party candidate, saying that he will be “traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle.”
The Democratic Party’s rapid left-wing lurch has left Manchin, and voters across the country, behind. Manchin knows this and has known it for years. Combine that with the fact that Democrats are keen on running an 80-year-old unpopular president as their candidate, and Manchin has an incentive to take his political career to the presidential trail. After all, he has no future in the Senate after November 2024.
Whatever Manchin ends up doing, it is clear that he and the Democratic Party put him in this position. As a result, Republicans will almost certainly pick up a Senate seat, Democrats will sincerely have to wrestle with the concept of a centrist Democrat running an independent campaign and siphoning votes off of their unpopular liberal candidate, and Manchin’s political career probably ends either way.
Everyone must face the consequences of their political calculations, and this is what Manchin and the modern Democratic Party have earned themselves.